Roamio S5 TiVo reviews and facts

For anyone who has a Roamio and a Premiere, is it worth the upgrade? Are all the menus finally HD? I stopped following Tivo when they kept missing promises (like all HD menus and both cores activated to speed up UI).

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Both cores are activated in the Premiere.

I just dropped my slide remote. That is an extremely rare event for me.

For anyone who has a Roamio and a Premiere, is it worth the upgrade? Are all the menus finally HD? I stopped following Tivo when they kept missing promises (like all HD menus and both cores activated to speed up UI).

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It's worth the upgrade for the speed improvements alone. But it's also nice having 6 tuners instead of 4 (or 2). I'm still considering replacing a 2-tuner Premiere with a Basic model Roamio for the OTA tuners, but as I don't really use the OTA tuner except as a fallback should there be issues with cable, it's not a pressing need.

It's worth the upgrade for the speed improvements alone. But it's also nice having 6 tuners instead of 4 (or 2). I'm still considering replacing a 2-tuner Premiere with a Basic model Roamio for the OTA tuners, but as I don't really use the OTA tuner except as a fallback should there be issues with cable, it's not a pressing need.

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I have the Plus and a 2-tuner Premiere. The Roamio basic (which I replaced with a Plus), though snappier, does not feel as solid as the premiere. It is a terrific model if you don't have a TiVo or to replace a Series 3, IMO.

By "not as solid" - what do you mean? The hardware build quality? The software/UI?

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Hardware. Initially, I liked the fact that the Basic is more compact and doesn't need a fan. There is a person who returned the device who gave a bad "1" star review on Amazon complaining about the feet falling off in the box and being cheaply made. (I checked and that review is now gone.) I scoffed at the review leaving a snarky comment because it said nothing about functionality. Later, I understood what s/he meant as the feet on my Roamio fell off too. I do think they saved money on materials to bring it down to a price that more people can afford.

I had problems with it not starting without unplugging it from the device (not the outlet) so I decided to return mine also chalking it up to receiving a lemon. It gave me another reason to get the Plus . I left my good review on Amazon but downgraded it from "5" to "4" stars.

FYI for anyone using the Roamio with TiVo Minis, make sure if you have splitters in your house they are at least 1500k. I had 1000k splitters from a FiOS install and they wouldnt pass the MoCa signal. As soon as I installed 1 GHz splitters, it worked.

FYI for anyone using the Roamio with TiVo Minis, make sure if you have splitters in your house they are at least 1500k. I had 1000k splitters from a FiOS install and they wouldnt pass the MoCa signal. As soon as I installed 1 GHz splitters, it worked.

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When I was having connection issues that turned out to be a green switch problem, I had switched everything back to MoCA. Connections between my Roamio Pro and Minis were fine in my setup with an eight way FiOS supplied 1Ghz splitter and two of my own 1Ghz supplied splitters.

Are you sure your Roamio wasn't trying to use one of the higher channels that is out of range?

However many cable companies now utilize bandwidth up to 1000 MHz range so I think all consumer MoCA adapters default to channels > 1000 MHz. So depending on the frequency dropoff beyond 1GHz of the splitter it could cause problems. Safer to use 2 GHz splitters to be sure the signals are not excessively attenuated.